A lot of Texas players were toddlers for the last top-five matchup at DKR

The last time Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium housed two top-five teams for a college football matchup, the familiar faces of the Longhorns looked a lot different. 

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No. 2 Texas hosted No. 1 Ohio State in week two of the 2006 season, over 6,600 days ago. The iPhone was yet to exist, Nick Saban coached in the NFL and Texas had just won a national championship. It’s been 17 years since the Longhorns had a home game of the magnitude that it will have this week: No. 1 Texas vs No. 5 Georgia. 

Much of that is due to the best opportunity for a top-five matchup on the Longhorns’ schedule, the rivalry game with Oklahoma, being a neutral site affair. Similar could be said about Texas’ cohorts in various conferences over the past 50 or so years rarely being of top-five quality when they ventured to Austin.

With a group of college-aged students expected to play in a potential game of the year this Saturday, Inside Texas wanted to know how old some of the Longhorns were when that game happened, and what they might’ve been doing that weekend. 

We got mixed results.

“I was four years old then,” senior tight end Gunnar Helm said. “I was probably running around with a little foam football there in Denver.”

Hopefully a younger Helm wasn’t a Colorado fan, as the nearby school lost its second game of the year that same day on its way to a two-win season.

Junior left tackle Kelvin Banks was one of the youngest players at Monday’s press conference, and said he had no idea what he would’ve been doing.

“I was two years old,” Banks said. “I probably did not understand anything going on about that game.”

Senior center Jake Majors would’ve been four years old, and all he had to say was that his parents probably would’ve been having a tough weekend.

“I was probably getting in trouble with my parents,” Majors said.

One reporter joked that Majors was probably on that team 18 years ago, which didn’t seem to amuse the veteran center who often gets jokes about his age.

Some players, however, didn’t have the best grasp on their age when asked the question.

“I think I was like 10,” junior wide receiver Matthew Golden said.

If he was actually 10 years old for that game, he would be older than two time NFL MVP Lamar Jackson, who is now playing in his seventh NFL season. Golden was probably two or three years old, and in his defense, the question seemed to be lost in translation.

Senior defensive tackle Alfred Collins also presented an interesting answer to the question.

“(I would’ve been) watching the game for sure,” Collins said. “I would’ve been in middle school or high school then.”

If Collins was actually a young teenager in 2006, he would already be entering his early 30s. 

He’d probably still be younger than Cam Rising is, though.

But the funniest answer of all goes to the veteran on the roster, linebacker David Gbenda, one of the few COVID-year seniors on the team. 

“I was five, going to be six in the month of December,” Gbenda said. “I was probably pooping my pants.”

Senior cornerback Jahdae Barron didn’t know what he would say, but he clearly enjoyed hearing about his fellow teammate’s questionable response.

“Oh God,” was all the reaction Barron needed to give to show the reporters what he thought of Gbenda’s odd answer.

This weekend’s affair between the Bulldogs and the Longhorns will be the third top-five matchup in the history of Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, though the AP Poll has only been around since 1936 and not 100 years like the home of the Longhorns.

The first was in 1970 when Royal’s No. 1 Longhorns defeated No. 4 Arkansas 42-7 on December 5 to clinch the Southwest Conference title and the 1970 national title, at least according to the UPI and the National Football Foundation.

The next was the 2006 matchup between the Longhorns and Buckeyes.

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And the third will be on Saturday. While no current Longhorn was around for the first top-five battle in Austin and some were not even alive for the second, the members of the No. 1 Texas team will look to make history they will remember in the third such game at DKR.